A Women's Right to Vote

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Women's Right to Vote

August 26, 1920 was perhaps one of the greatest victories of the century for women. Now when the polls open women and men stand next to each other and cast a vote that holds the same importance. Every person should remember the time and effort it took to get here as they approach the poll booth. There was a struggle to over come and that struggle was won. The landmark acceptance of the Nineteenth Amendment changed the way of life in American forever.

"We were sixteen women sitting in sixteen chairs, longing to stand. (Dubois 250)" This quote given by Mary Baker before the Passing of the

Nineteenth Amendment is used to show how women were wanting and desired

to stand next to each other in a line of equal measures. Before 1920 life for a female was assumed to be a life living in the house watching over the children and making sure that everyone was happy. If a female stepped out of this common place it would be looked upon as being a radical. Needless to say it was a time where the lines between the male gender and the female gender was one of great defiance. As Mary White Rowlandson remarked in her dying words, "It is a life I am no longer willing to lead. I am old so it is better for me to die without the fight, but you are young so fight and be seen. Today replaces yesterday, for as yesterday you had nothing to live for, today you have

the world." (Dubois 125) It was a new life that was waiting behind the Nineteenth Amendment. Every woman knew that it must be achieved and the wall between

genders had to fall and it was to fall now. The only thing standing in the way of

this Amendment was the barrier of man.

Even though not every man stood in this line, there were en...

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...were times of silence and times of uproar, but in the end it was the final poll call, which told the story. There were those who fought and there are those who stand to vote, we in the present shall remember the past only to live our futures under the same laws of justice. To the Nineteenth Amendment there is honor, obedience, and pride, all of which will never die in this time or in those to follow.

Works Cited

Dubois, Ellen Carol. Woman Suffrage and Women's Right. New York

University Press. New York. 1998.

Foner, Eric. Reader's Companion of American History. Huughton Miffilin

Company. Boston, 1991.

Kraditor, Aileen S. The Ideas of the Women Suffrage Movement, 1980-

1920. Norton. Washington, 1980.

Mackay, Andrew. One Half of the People: The Fight for Women Suffrage.

University of Illinois. Chicago, 1982.

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